When people say the key to a happy, long-lasting marriage is communication, they generally mean the verbal kind: talking things out with your spouse, sharing your feelings, and all that lot. [Rich] AKA [Thumblegudget] took it another way, and built a engine-room telegraph for intramarital communication.
Now, this is less crazy than it sounds. Like the ship’s telegraph, which matched the position of an indicator on the bridge and in the engine room, [Rich]’ telegraph pairs an indicator in his office with one in the living areas of the house. He sets himself to “busy” and the arrow on the matching unit in the basement moves to that position. This naturally goes both ways, which allows his wife to point the needle to remind [Rich] that it may be time for hugs, dinner, or — most essentially for a brit — tea.
In operation each unit has a gimbal motor paired to a rotation sensor and an ESP32-S3 driving it. Thanks to that rotation sensor, the gimbal motor is programmed to lock itself into the positions on the wheel when you poke it, and the ESP32 wirelessly synchronizes the two units. A moving arrow might not be enough to get [Rich] to come down to dinner, so just like the ship’s telegraph you may remember from Titanic, [Rich]’s comes equipped with a bell to draw attention to itself.
Given [Rich]’s wife participated in the video and isn’t filing for divorce, it seems he may be onto something. Perhaps good communication doesn’t need to involve cumbersome human speech at all; maybe all a marriage needs is a telegraph like this and some paddles to send more complicated messages via Morse code.
Silly and cute, and I hope it works well for them.
I’ve considered a similar thing when working from home using an industrial indicator light stack. Red being critically busy, yellow being okay to talk but still busy, and green being I am open for a break if I’m needed.
In my office, there are three planners that have their bluetooth headset on their head all the time, calling with drivers, and I never know whether they are on a call or not. I thought about adding those stack lights to know whether I could talk to them or not, haven’t come to it.
There are usb headsets for Microsoft Teams with busy lights when there is a call in progress, but for reasons unknown to mankind, Microsoft is very secretive about the USB protocols that make that possible (only divulged to OEM partners).
You may need that : https://hackaday.com/2026/06/23/reviving-msn-messengers-i-buddy-usb-accessory/
A former colleague of mine did this with two Lego bricks: Red meant ‘do not disturb’, green ‘ok to talk’.
Missing call-outs..for hur:
Chilly
Frigid
For hym:
High sulfur
He misspelled ‘fapping’. Other than that, A+ ;)
Is there not one really obvious omission on the dial? Or is that what ‘yes’ and ‘no’ is for?
There are so many positions and options for that, I keep that on a separate dial.
Well, I presumed that option was what the little red sticker was covering… lol…
This is just genius. And the video is too funny and realistic: the conversation between the two is exactly how it would be in my case. I’d seriously buy this if it was something you could buy. Now I’m forced to build 3 of them. The vintage bell is the cherry on top. Cheers! outstanding invention.
This is an excellent implementation of an idea I’ve wanted to do since I first learned about ships’ telegraphs, but why is it mounted above eye level on both ends? It looks vaguely like one, but it isn’t a clock. Something meant to get ones attention should be hung at eye level, like a work of art. Does it need kept out of reach of the kid(s)?
Pity the engine order telegraph wasn’t made using selsyn motors. Full speed astern!
Ahhh…. I really love this. But I would likely be faffing off too much to ever complete it.
Johny Depp and Amber did plenty of communicating, didn’t help at all to fix a toxic relation tough, and it was a mistake to try.